Every Pure Bites article tagged meal planning.
Everyday eating
How much cooking oil should one person use in a day?
India’s dietary guidelines put added oil and fat at 20–50 g a day depending on how active you are — about 27–30 g on a 2,000 kcal diet. What that is in teaspoons, in a month’s shopping, and where a fried snack fits inside it.
Nutrition & health
I have been prescribed a GLP-1 medicine and I am vegetarian. What should I actually eat?
GLP-1 medicines shrink appetite, so every small meal has to carry more. What a published expert advisory says about protein, fibre, fluids and the nutrients to watch — translated to dal, paneer, curd and sprouts, with the limits of that translation stated.
Everyday eating
I feel weak and hungry all day during the Navratri fast — what should I actually be eating?
Nine days of vrat food is nine days of sabudana if you let it be — and sabudana is starch. Here is what the fasting staples actually carry per 100 g, which combinations keep you full and steady, and how to build a fast that does not end in a 4 pm headache.
Recipes & food ideas
I want to eat millets but I am bored of bajra roti — how else can I use them?
Millets are the grain India rediscovered and then put back into roti. They are better as a grain bowl: cooked, cooled, dressed with lemon, tossed with pulses and vegetables — a lunch that travels, holds, and carries the fibre and minerals millets are famous for. Three bowls, with the numbers.
Nutrition & health
I keep hearing about fibermaxxing — how much fibre should I eat and what Indian foods have it?
“Fibermaxxing” is the year’s nutrition trend — deliberately eating a lot of fibre for gut, blood sugar and fullness. The Indian plate was doing this before it had a name. Here is what 30 g a day looks like in dal, sabzi, fruit and roti, and how to get there without a week of bloating.
Nutrition & health
I am vegetarian and everyone says I am not getting enough protein — how much do I need and how do I get it from Gujarati food?
A Gujarati thali is famous for being short on protein. It does not have to be. Here is what a working adult actually needs, what each thing on the plate contributes, and a day that reaches 60 g with dal, curd, paneer, chana and peanuts — nothing from a tub.
Everyday eating
I work in Surat and I want a lunch that survives the commute and the heat.
Local, specific and honest about the constraints — the heat, the commute, the office fridge you do not have, and what a Surat kitchen can and cannot deliver to your desk.
Smart snacking
I don’t know whether to buy the 500 g or the 1 kg pack.
We sell in 500 g and 1 kg, and people ask which one they need. The answer depends on one number nobody has thought about: how big your evening bowl actually is.
Everyday eating
Healthy food becomes boring after three days.
Healthy food gets boring on about day three. It is nearly always a texture and dressing problem, not a vegetable problem — and both are cheap to fix.
Everyday eating
I don’t know what I’m going to eat tomorrow, so I decide at the last minute and decide badly.
Most people do not have a food problem. They have a 12.40 pm decision problem, repeated five times a week. Move the decision and the problem mostly goes away.
Smart snacking
I eat well all day and then snack badly at 5 pm.
Most people eat well until about half past four. What happens next is a planning problem dressed up as a willpower problem — and it has a boring, effective fix.
Everyday eating
I need a lunch that survives a desk and doesn’t wreck my afternoon.
The 3 pm crash is a lunch problem, not a sleep problem. Here is what to eat at your desk on a Surat working day — including the four we send out most.
Ordering well
I order the healthy option and somehow it still isn’t.
Nine ways an order that looked healthy stops being healthy — most of them happening before the food is even made.